Yes, I know, the Christmas holiday is now over, but you have just got to have my pie recipe – I’ve been making this pudding pie since 1979 when I bought a tin of Hershey’s Cocoa with a tiny cookbook attached – over the years I have increased ingredients slightly and learned to cook this pudding just a bit “tighter” so that it doesn’t run when the pie is sliced.

Here’s the recipe:

Hershey’s Cocoa Pudding/Pie Filling

1 cup sugar
3/8 cup Hershey’s Cocoa (I like the “Special Dark” now)
4 tbl cornstarch
½ tsp salt
3-3/8 cups milk
2 tbl butter
1 tsp vanilla
Baked and cooled 10″ pie crust

Combine sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and salt in medium saucepan; gradually whisk in milk. Cook over medium heat stirring constantly until mixture boils; boil and stir one minute. Remove from heat and blend in butter and vanilla. Pour into cooled pie crust.

I went a little crazy this year with my crust, from my little tin of alphabet cutters I pulled out the letter J and grabbed a skewer too, ’cause it’s hard as %$#^!* to get the pie dough out of that J! Anyway, before baking the crust, I carefully placed the J’s to look like candy canes around the edge – here is a shot of the baked edge, beautiful isn’t it!

But I wasn’t happy with beautiful, I decided the candy canes needed to be colored like candy canes! (And oh, did I mention I did all this with a fever thanks to the flu / cold I was suffering?)

Well as you can see, the pie came out pretty darn cute and the family loved it. Chocolate Pudding Pie is their favorite.

Decoratively piped whipped cream made the candy canes pop and I was very happy with the look!

I’m sure by now you have learned that 2008 has been declared by the United Nations to be the International Year of the Potato – lets have some fun with potatoes and not lose sight of the reasoning of the United Nations of “the need to revive public awareness of the relationship that exists between poverty, food security, malnutrition and the potential contribution of the potato to defeating hunger.” Here is a link to the official International Year of the Potato website.